Nakama
by grumpyjenn
Summary: River gets herself into trouble, a lot. And sometimes that causes some family strife. T for trauma. Spoilers thru series 6. And as always, I'm thankful for Snowy Ashes and beverlymaldoran, who are such good beta-readers they may as well be co-authors.
1. Discovery

A/N: I usually write Eleven/River fics, but this one wrote itself and turned out to be more about the made-family (Nakama) than about just the two of them. Thanks as always to Snowy Ashes and beverlymaldoran for their invaluable beta-ing and encouragement.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

The Doctor was furious with his wife. Not the Sexy Thing wife (although really, they were both pretty sexy after all), but the mostly-human wife, the younger one.

The one he was furious with most often.

Because the blue box wife, although she was capricious and went her own way and often dragged him across the universe willy-nilly to where he was needed, she almost never put herself in danger. Certainly not just for the thrill of it as his other wife was wont to do. His other wife - oh _all _right, _River_ - put herself in danger on a regular basis. She seemed to find it exciting and fun - and while a little part of him enjoyed the chase and the running, and a bigger part of him _really _enjoyed the flirting with River in the face of danger - she was (probably) in _danger_, so he was furious with her.

Because she had gone into danger deliberately. Without him to back her up. He hated when she did that. And she did it a lot.

So here he and his _other_ wife - the non-biped one - were, charging to River's rescue. Again. Not that she usually needed _rescuing_ as such, but she seemed to appreciate it when he came along to open locked doors and make long and dramatic speeches and work out how to get the Bad Guys to kill themselves rather than having to shoot them. Except when she preferred to shoot them herself, as she sometimes did, but _then_ she liked having him along for the flirting. So why didn't she just call him _before_ she went into one of these situations, so he could be there for the beginnings as well as the ends? Yes, yes, spoilers, but if they were all _that _spoilery, would the Old Girl bring him to her in those times and places, since she took him where he needed to be or where he was needed? No, scratch that, that's rubbish, of _course_ she would - to_ her_ time was all of a piece and so there _were_ no spoilers. Or _are_. Or _would be_. Or something.

He sighed, fingers on the controls, flipping them around with a little snap of irritation that was unusual for him. He felt his blue-box-wife grumbling in the back of his mind and he forced himself to relax. It wasn't _her_ fault that River sent for them in this peremptory way, after ignoring their existence when they _wanted _to go with her. Just send a note by psychic paper, a note saying effectively _oops, in over my head honey, please rescue_. Not like she could oh, say, ask him to come along in the first place, oh no, that would be _polite_. The Old Girl grumbled in the back of his mind again, and he got the impression she wanted him to re-read the note. Oh,_ fine_.

_I'm sorry, my love, but I'm stuck. _That was all the note said, plus the coordinates, but suddenly it struck him that "I'm stuck." was awfully terse and succinct and... and not-flirty for River.

Uh-oh.

Now he was not only angry, he was fretting. What in the universe had she gotten herself into _now_? When the TARDIS materialised and opened her doors, then shut them again before he could leave, his hearts sank. What did Sexy Thing want him to do? He looked around the console room and saw... oh no, a big human-issue first-aid kit, circa World War II. Very not good. _Oh my River, _he thought despairingly, _what's happened?_ Sexy Thing _knew_ things - he assumed because she saw the future and the past as one thing - and if she went to the trouble of providing him with a first aid kit, then River - or someone, ideally anyone _but_ River, except Amy or Rory or, oh never mind that, that's rubbish - needed help.

The Doctor took the kit, and the TARDIS opened the doors again. To a strange planet; he'd never been here before. He edged through the door, holding the first-aid kit before him like a shield, and hopped experimentally. _Oooh... heavy gravity here_, he thought, _maybe half-again as much as Earth-normal. Good air, though, plenty of oxygen... must be very small to have such pull with the same kind of atmosph... wait. Strike that, not important at the moment. Think, Time Lord, focus!_ He took a deep breath and thought fleetingly that yes, the air here really was quite... there he went again. _Find River_, he scolded himself, _that's the important thing_. He began to scan the area.

It really was remarkably Earth-like aside from the gravity; that showed in how heavy he felt and how short and spread-out the trees were. The TARDIS had parked herself at the foot of a hill - like a short mountain, really, and there appeared to be... was it a cave entrance? He poked his head back inside the TARDIS. "In the cave, Old Girl?" he shouted, and felt a wash of agreement in the back of his mind. "All right, Sexy Thing," he called, "Be right back, hopefully with River." He turned on his sonic, aiming it like a torch, and headed into the cave mouth.

He had to duck his head to enter (_although not by much; River would have been able to get in easily, and she wasn't that much shorter than he, in fact when they kissed and she was wearing those heels she liked so much they were exactly the same height, they fit together so well, but he just looked taller because he was so thin. Not as thin as his Tenth Regeneration had been, but thin enough, and his legs and especially his arms were so long that they made him look taller than he was, and... FOCUS!_), but it opened up as soon as he was past the entrance, giving him comfortable headroom. It was in fact _very_ dark, and he was grateful for the sonic screwdriver, no matter how much his friends mocked it. He shone it forward as he turned a corner... and stopped in his tracks, transfixed by the scene before him.

It was a dark, roughly circular room, cut into the rock, about twelve metres across. And the floor was positively littered with _them_, the Silents, all dead. There were a few bodies of the Church Clerics in full battle gear interspersed among the dead aliens. In the middle of the floor was a pit four or so metres in diameter, and the Doctor approached it cautiously, prodding a few Silents with his toe to make sure they weren't just shamming. They weren't. As he got close to the centre, he heard a faint noise, as of someone breathing harshly, and he leapt over the remaining bodies to shine the sonic into the pit.

It was River, half-sitting, half-lying in the bottom of the pit. Another Silent - this one dead too - lay near her. The pit wasn't all that deep, really, perhaps three metres or so, but too deep for her to get herself out under high gravity, especially if she was hurt. He looked closer. She _was_ hurt. Her clothes were torn or... were those_ burn _marks? A slow rage began to build in him as he realized what the Silents had done to her. They'd used their electrical discharge, not all at once to kill her and have done with it, no... they had been _playing_ with her, like cats with a mouse,_ torturing _her as they had when she was a child. There was a red haze over everything in the room and the part of him that was still able to form coherent thought noted that he'd never actually_ seen red _before. He had to shake his head several times and clear his throat before he could trust himself to speak. "River?"

She looked up at him from her position down in the pit, relief and pain in equal measure on her face. "Hello, Sweetie," she whispered.

And fainted dead away.

_Oh no, oh no, oh no,_ he thought frantically, _How can I help her? Oh, right, first aid kit, must be something for burns in there, or Sexy wouldn't have had me take it. Sexy! Old Girl, I need your help, how can I_... he realised dimly with one part of his mind that he was running out of the cave, while the other part of his mind gibbered at him to go back, go back to River. _Shut up!_ he told the gibbering part of his mind, _we have to send Sexy Thing for help!_

Oh.

The Doctor reached the entrance to the cave, leaned out, saw that the TARDIS' doors were still open, and shouted, "River's hurt! Get help! And... rope. And a hurt-person-lifting... thingy. What are you waiting for, Sexy? Hurry!" And he dashed back into the depths of the cave as he heard the welcome _vroop vroop_ sound of the TARDIS dematerialising. He vaulted over the last of the bodies on the floor and stopped at the edge of the hole where he had dropped the first aid kit, shining the sonic torch onto River's pale and unconscious face. _Green is not her color,_ thought that dispassionate part of his mind, and he eased himself and the kit over the edge, carefully so as not to land on her in the confined space.

He knelt carefully by her prone form and opened the first aid kit. _Ah_, he thought, _a not-green torch. _He snapped it on and noticed with relief that she didn't look quite so battered under yellow-white light as she did under green. He patted the sonic apologetically and tucked it into his pocket. _Right,_ he thought, _first aid now, worry about everything else later_. He lifted her eyelids gently and looked into her eyes by torchlight. _Responsive pupils, good, but then why is she unconscious?_ He shone the torch down her limbs and her torso, checking for extensive bleeding. None he could see, but he didn't want to move her to check; he knew enough about (mostly) human physiology to know he could hurt her worse that way. The torchlight traveled down her body and her left leg and then he saw it. The leg was bent unnaturally between knee and ankle. He winced; in his experience broken bones _hurt_. A lot. He used the medical shears in the kit to carefully cut her trouser leg away from the injury and shuddered sympathetically. Not only was it broken, but it was already knitting itself back together. _Probably the Time Lord DNA,_ thought that irritatingly calm bit of his mind_, we'll have to set it now, before it heals all wrong_.

The Doctor closed his eyes for a moment, bracing himself for what he had to do. He gently laid his forehead against River's and _thought _as well as whispered, "I'm so sorry, my River, so _so_ sorry. There isn't another way. Please forgive me." And he moved his hands down and set the broken bone.

When she screamed, the tears started pouring down his face, but his hands remained steady as he splinted and wrapped the injured leg. He didn't dare touch her burns, and they were all over her body, so he couldn't do what he longed to - comfort her by gathering her into his arms. He could touch her face, though, and he did just that, taking it between his hands, babbling apologies and explanations - "I'm _so sorry, _River, I had to do it, _I had to_, the bones were knitting and I had to set them so they wouldn't heal crookedly. I didn't wantto hurt you, please forgive me, _please_, and _oh River_, I am _so_ sorry, I never meant to hurt you, I-" He broke off as she put one hand shakily to his lips and he leaned closer to hear her whisper.

"It _hurts_. I... help me, _please_." Her hand dropped weakly from his mouth; the effort had exhausted her. But she didn't pass out again.

"Right, yes, let's see what we have in the kit..." he muttered as he rummaged in it. "Can you tell me what drugs you can have that might help? That are safe for you?" She managed a nod. "Aspirin?" She shook her head. "Right, right, bleeding... River! _Are_ you bleeding?" She shook her head again, gestured weakly at a burn. "Oh. Okay." _Remain calm_, Time Lord, he told himself,_ If you go all hazy-red-fury on her, it'll scare her. She doesn't need that just now_. "Right, morphine?" She nodded, a bit doubtfully. "You're not sure?"

"Very little," she croaked, "Need to function. Penicillin too." Her voice was getting stronger now that the sudden agony of her leg being set had subsided to an almost-bearable level. "Burns infect... easily, even for me. Any... burn ointment?" He nodded and retrieved all the necessary items, tears still in his eyes but no longer falling. He was keeping his anger tightly controlled and if she had been more alert she would have seen the muscle jumping in his jaw as he clenched his teeth. But she didn't and at this point he was grateful, because he _did not want_ her to see him like this. If she hadn't already killed them all with the help of the Clerics, he'd have been up there murdering each and every one of them, with his bare hands if necessary, and he would have gloried in the slaughter. Killing the Clerics he could understand, it was a them-or-us thing, even killing River... though he was not at all sure _he_ could even recover from such a thing - he shuddered at the very thought - but at least it would have been _comprehensible_. But _hurting_ her, torturing her... that was _unacceptable_. Hurting River Song, just for the sick pleasure it gave them... that was _intolerable_.

So he would not tolerate it.

But first he needed to get her stable, and get her safe, and _then_ he would worry about hunting down every last Silent left in the universe and killing it. Slowly. So he shoved the red haze back until he could smile encouragingly at River as he dressed the burns and gave her the pills and supported her head while she took them. Dressing the burns was painful for her - and for him - and she was crying weakly by the time he was done, and he stroked her hair out of her face and crooned apologies to her, over and over, until the painkillers hit her system and she relaxed.

They were sitting there like that - him smoothing her hair back and murmuring to her, her head in his lap, the body of the Silent at her feet - when he heard the faint _vroop vroop_ of the TARDIS materialising outside the cave. He considered getting up to lead the rescuers to them, but having just gotten River comfortable, he chose to stay where he was. They'd follow the path of dead Silents to the pit. He wondered briefly who the Old Girl had gotten to come, but then his question was answered by the voice of one Rory Williams, his friend, sometimes his humany conscience, and by some weird and timey wimey concatenation of events his father-in-law.

"What in the _hell_ happened _here_?"


	2. Rescue

Rory dreamed that night. He often dreamt of the time he and Amy had spent traveling with the Doctor. It was only natural, he supposed, what with Melody and the Last Centurion and the - he musn't think about the _other_ Amy, when he thought about her too much he _hated _the Doctor - and so many things to remember really. His relationship with the Doctor was... complicated. The Doctor_ himself _was complicated. Rory knew, intellectually, that the Doctor was not human and therefore could be be expected to _act _human, but still, some of the things he'd done, the people he'd left behind, the... and for a time he'd thought Amy wanted the Doctor, not _him_, and that didn't help things any. To Rory, the Doctor was a friend, a brother, and in some weird way a son-in-law, but he was also a... a sociopath by human standards. Sometimes.

_Or he wouldn't have left the older, bitter Amy to..._ he shook his head, trying to get the image...the image that retreated but never really _left_... out of his mind.

So when Rory woke up that morning, next to Amy in their big soft bed, he was not really surprised, and both elated and resigned to hear the familiar _vroop vroop_ noise that Melody-River said was the TARDIS materialising with her parking brake on. He shook Amy's shoulder gently. "Amy? _He's_ here. We'd better go see what he wants; he doesn't drop by all that often anymore." Amy muttered something at him, but all he caught was _-ger himself_, so he kissed her forehead and padded down to the garden alone.

_Huh. No Doctor_, Rory thought, puzzled. The TARDIS' doors were wide open, though, so he walked in. She looked the same, and he felt that headache-inducing wash of greeting. _Pretty One_, she always thought of him. He kind of liked that, in spite of the headache. The Doctor wasn't in here, either, but one of the console screens was flashing. He went over to it and hesitantly touched the flashing blue button on the screen. It lit up with a picture of the Doctor, and Melody-as-River, and he heard the Doctor's voice say _River's hurt! Get help! And... rope. And a hurt-person-lifting... thingy. What are you waiting for, Sexy? Hurry! _

"Amy!" Rory bellowed as he ran back to the house, "Get my kit! River's hurt!" By the time he made it up the stairs to their room, Amy had the medical kit out on the bed and was half-dressed already. Rory quickly double-checked the kit for completeness and added a canvas-and-rope stretcher and a length of extra rope. _One thing about traveling with the Doctor_, Rory thought grimly as he dressed, _is that 'nurse' becomes 'combat medic' pretty damn quickly_. "Ready?"

Amy nodded, and they ran downstairs and into the TARDIS. "River?" Amy inquired. As always, her accent got thicker when she was troubled. "Did they say _how_ she was hurt?" Rory shook his head. The TARDIS' doors opened. _That was fast_, Amy thought, _the old girl must be really worried_. Rory took the kit and Amy the rolled-up stretcher and together they stepped out of the TARDIS' doors at the cave mouth. "Ugh!" groaned Amy, stumbling a bit, "Is it the gravity making me feel so... so _heavy_?"

Rory nodded, carefully. His headache was back. "Yeah, think so." He took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. "Right, I'd say we go in there. Got a torch?" He smiled at her as she produced one from a pocket and snapped it on, and they entered the cave together, ducking under the overhang at the entrance, and then standing straight. Amy shone the torch in front of them as they moved forward and approached what looked like a turn in the corridor.

"Oh my God," breathed Amy in horrified fascination at the scene before them. Rory seemed to be trying to say the same, but the words wouldn't come out. _No_, he thought, _the Doctor certainly didn't do this. He hates the Silents as much as the next person, maybe more, but this... carnage isn't his style_. He and Amy inched forward, and came to the lip of a hole in the ground. "Oh," said Amy, low in her throat, a sound of sympathy and pain at the sight of the Doctor cradling River's head in his lap, and River's burned and battered body stretched out on the floor of the pit. She shone the torch down on the pair.

Rory cleared his throat. "What in the _hell_ happened _here_?" he asked rhetorically, and dropped gently into the pit at River's feet, nearly landing on the dead Silent there. He barely gave it a look and knelt by the Doctor so he could check River over. "What did you _do_ to her, Doctor? _How could you_? She_ trusts _you and you... you..."

The Doctor felt the red hazy rage try to creep back into his mind and ruthlessly pushed it away as he carefully removed his hand from River's forehead. He _would not look at Rory_; if he did he... he couldn't be held responsible for what he might do when he saw the look - _that _look - of suspicion and yes, hatred he knew was on Rory's face. So he made sure his hand was well away from River before he clenched it into a fist. "I did not do this to her, Rory. _I never would_. You know that." His voice was quiet, that voice he got when the Oncoming Storm was just a few low, dark clouds on the horizon. The voice that meant you had better watch everything you said and you did... or the storm could break.

River suddenly giggled. "Penny in the air," she sing-songed in that drunken voice people get when they've been drugged. "Look... behind you, Rory the... Roman, Father dear."

He did. And he saw the Silent, the dead Silent lying there at her feet, and remembered, and he realised just how close he'd come to... to... He decided that checking on River was the better part of valor. "Um... nice work on this splint, Doctor," he managed, as conversationally as possible. "Yours, I believe?"

_As apologies go, it's not much, _thought the Doctor, _but under the circumstances I'll accept it, knowing that Rory can't- or won't - give me more right now. _He risked a glance at Rory, and nodded once. "I also gave her one of these morphine tablets and this penicillin capsule, and spread this ointment on her burns." He said all this in a dry and detached tone, one medical professional to another.

"And the penny drops," said Amy with a certain exasperation from the edge of the pit. "Can we get River back to the TARDIS now? Standing here with all these dead aliens is starting to give me the shivers."

"Right," said the Doctor briskly, as though trying to erase the tension. "Rory, could you and Amy set up the rescue... er lifting-thing. I... I need a minute." His voice faltered a bit. "Please." He bent his head back to River, still propped up with her head in his lap. "Now, my lovely River," he murmured, "we're going to take you to the TARDIS, in the medical bay, out of this heavy gravity, all right?" She nodded, her eyes glassy and her pupils pinpoints from the morphine. "Right, I'm going to have to move so we can..." He trailed off as she shook her head.

"Stay... with me." He noticed that her voice was getting weaker again, and he thought_ this is very not good_._ Is the gravity too high, given her injuries? Or - _he winced inwardly_ - have I given her too much of the morphine? Oh no..._

"I will. I'm here." He eased her head down gently as he shifted out from under it. "I'm here, River, I promise." He knelt over her and kissed her gently on the lips. She smiled under the familiar caress, sighed...

...and went limp. "River?" There was no response. He tried again, putting the thought - the _feel_ - of her behind her name as he laid his forehead on hers. "_River?_"

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

Not even a breath.

_Oh no, River, please, no. _He knew this, he was sure he did, you pinch her nose and breathe _for _her. Take a breath, breathe air into her lungs. Take a breath, breathe for her. Take a breath... again. Again. Again. _Again_.

She was breathing now. He closed his eyes and laid his head on hers, searching for something, _anything_, to prove she was there.

_...I'm sorry, my love._

She was back.

"Rory." It was a choked whisper, and he tried again. "_Rory!_"

Rory dropped back into the pit, holding the light stretcher in one hand. He sank to his knees on the other side of River and felt for her pulse. All right, a little slow and thready for her, but not too bad, considering. Could be from the painkiller. She was breathing and he didn't like how shallow the breaths were, but in this heavy gravity that might even be normal. The important thing was to get her back into normal Earth gravity. He looked across her prone form at the Doctor, ready to ask him to help get her onto the stretcher. And then he just stared.

Rory had seen the Doctor angry many times, and frightened, and worried. But he had never seen the Doctor like_ this_; were the Time Lord a human being, Rory would diagnose him as _in shock_. The Doctor was sitting back on his heels, shaking violently, his mouth working as though he was trying to say something but couldn't get the words out. His eyes were... his eyes were terribly _blank_, staring at nothing, and Rory could see that the word being formed silently over and over again was her name... _River, oh no, River, River, no, please no, River_.

Rory closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and looked directly into the Doctor's blank expression, measured the distance in his mind, and slapped the Time Lord sharply across the face. He heard a gasp from Amy up on the edge of the hole, but ignored it as he whispered furiously, "Doctor! River will be all right, she's breathing, she'll be okay once we get her out of here. But I cannot do that without your help and I do not have the leisure to deal with a hysterical Time Lord right now!" He noted dispassionately that the Doctor had focused on him, and his tone softened a bit. "You've held it together this long, I need you to keep it that way until we're all safely back on the TARDIS, all right? You can fall apart then if you need to." There was a short nod. "Good. Now help me get her onto this stretcher."

Together they gently secured River to the stretcher and clipped it to the ropes Amy tossed down to them. Rory shimmied up one of the ropes, leaving the Doctor with River. "I'm so sorry," he whispered as he stroked her hair, "I didn't mean to hurt you." He dropped a light kiss on her forehead, feeling an echo of _I'm sorry, my love_ from her sleeping mind. "It's all right, my River," he murmured into her hair, "I'm here. You rest." He steadied the stretcher as her parents hauled her to the edge of the pit. He climbed up the rope they lowered after un-clipping it from the stretcher, and spoke quietly, through gritted teeth. "Amy, you hold the torch. Rory and I will take the stretcher."

Outside the cave entrance, the TARDIS was waiting, her doors open and welcoming. They took the stretcher inside and the Doctor headed off toward the left of the center console into the medical bay, where they set River up on the exam table and made her as comfortable as possible, standing on either side of the table. Her breathing was normalized, Rory saw with relief, now that she was out of the punishing gravity field. He glanced at the Doctor. "She'll be all right, Doctor. She's going to be fine." He took a second glance when there was no response. _Uh-oh_, he thought, _looks like he took me at my word and he's falling apart now_. "Amy! Amy, I think he's in shock too. Do something for him."

_What am I? _thought Amy, _the Time Lord expert? Um... humans get hot sweet tea when they're in shock, right? I'll find something_. "Right," she said, walking around the table. "C'mere, Doctor, we'll leave Rory to his work." She tugged on his hand but he wouldn't move.

"No," the Doctor said quietly. His voice was steady although his eyes were still blank and unseeing, and his body shook with tremors that were not caused by cold. "I promised her I'd stay with her." Amy looked at her husband, and he shrugged helplessly. She rolled her eyes and looked around, spotted a chair and brought it to the Doctor, gently pushing him into it.

"If you can't leave, Doctor," she said, as cheerfully as she could manage, "I'll bring your tea to you. Anything you'd especially like?" She hoped he'd say something witty or strange or just plain _Doctor_... but he didn't. _What do I do?_ "Tea? Jammy Dodgers? Fish fingers and custard?" There was a ghost of a smile at that, so she took it as a good idea and went off to find the kitchen. Rory continued to keep an eye on River while occasionally sneaking a glance at the Doctor, making sure he wasn't going to do something... something so outrageously Time-Lordy that Rory couldn't cope with it. Still, he was taken by surprise when the Doctor began to speak, in that quiet, deadly tone that meant he was beyond mere anger and well on the way into becoming the Oncoming Storm.

"I want to kill them, Rory," he said in that flat tone that sent shivers up Rory's spine, "They hurt her. I want to kill them. Slowly. And painfully."

Rory considered several replies, and went with the most heartfelt of them. "When do we leave?"

The Doctor didn't move, except that he was still shivering violently. "I promised I would stay with her."

"And we don't know who hurt her, either," Rory pointed out, wondering vaguely what he was trying to remember.

"Don't... go," came the whisper from the exam table between them. "Stay with me. _Please_."

_It's remarkable_, thought Rory with a certain clinical detachment, _how quickly he seems to recover from his own shock when someone he loves needs him. _The blank, unseeing look just drained off the Doctor's face and the trembling stopped between one breath and the next as he bent solicitously over River and kissed her, so very gently, on the forehead. Rory looked away, embarrassed at the intimacy implicit in that simple gesture.

And when Amy came in with the tea tray, Rory took it from her silently and placed on a table near the Doctor, then took her hand and led her out of the medical bay.


	3. Healing

"You have to talk to her, Doctor." Rory sighed with exasperation. They were sitting in the kitchen in the TARDIS, across the table from one another. The Doctor was dipping fish fingers into custard, and that strange comfort food combination meant he was still troubled.

"But I can't," replied the Doctor, his tone implying it was the most reasonable thing in the world. The tone said that Rory was just being silly, insisting like this. But inside, that gibbering part of him was, well... gibbering again. _What if she hates me? She must _know_, how I almost killed her, and what if she hates me? _Stupid gibbering part, _shut up_!

Rory sighed again, and decided to pull out the big guns. "No, Doctor. You _will_ talk to River, if I have to drag you in there _by your hair_. Or worse, have Amy do it for me." He watched with a certain amount of amusement as the Doctor flinched at the thought, but the amusement quickly turned to professional concern at the expression on the Time Lord's face. _Whatever it is that happened in that cave_, he thought wryly, _the Doctor's not completely over it either. Why didn't I become a _psychiatric _nurse? Oh, wait, right. I didn't _want_ to do this._ "All right," he said shortly, "Tell me."

The fish finger dropped unnoticed into the custard bowl as the Doctor scrubbed at his face with his hands. He looked old and tired, even with his young face, and Rory waited a little more patiently than before.

"I could have killed her, Rory," he said, in a voice scarcely above a whisper. "If she had died, it would have been my fault." Rory waited, silently. He knew there would be more; the Doctor didn't go all... all shocky like that for no reason. "She stopped breathing... she stopped _breathing_ down there in that pit while you and Amy were setting up the lift, and..." His voice was getting louder now, faster, "...and I... it was the morphine,I gave her too much, she was_ hurting_ and I couldn't bear to watch her hurting, and I gave her too much and it's because of _me_ she has no regenerations left-"

"That's enough," Rory interrupted, halting the desperate flow of words. He shook his head. "You know, even brilliant as you are, when it comes to River, every logical thought just... stops." _And_, he thought, _that sure makes you more... human_. "Look, let's take those things one at a time, all right?" A nod. "She used up her regenerations for you. But that was _her_ choice. Morphine... you gave her _one_ pill, right?" Another nod, very cautious. "That's certainly an acceptable dosage. If she stopped breathing, I think it was a combination of things - the pain, shock, the gravity, and _maybe_ the morphine. Not your fault." His voice softened. "And you started her breathing again, didn't you? Even if you _had_ accidentally overdosed her - _which you hadn't_ - you got her breathing again. Now go talk with her."

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

River sighed with impatience. "This is getting ridiculous," she complained resentfully. It wasn't clear whether she resented Amy's solicitude or her own weakness. Or both. "I'm fine! It's just a few burns and a sore ankle, I've been through worse!"

Amy shook her head from the chair by the table where she had laid the breakfast tray. "You're really not, you know," she scolded, "Burns and broken bones take a long time to heal, even for you. It's only been two days, River!"

River was in bed. Now, she didn't really mind being in bed most of the time. Bed had the capacity to be a fun place. But she was bored, and she_ hated_ the feeling of weakness and fatigue, so she tried to ignore it, to convince Amy that she was fine. Even though, deep down, she knew she was not. "I am not a child, Amy, and I've been injured before. I think I know when I'm well enough to get out of bed! And I'm getting out of bed _now_!" She suited action to word, flipping the covers off and sitting up on the edge of the bed, gritting her teeth and holding onto the bedpost through the wave of dizziness that hit her.

"River!" Amy started toward the bed, concerned, just as the door opened. Rory and the Doctor entered the room, and Rory went to speak quietly in his wife's ear. Amy nodded at Rory, blushing slightly, and they left the room, holding hands, and shut the door quietly behind them. The Doctor crossed to where River was perched on the edge of the bed and sat carefully next to her. He didn't touch her, and that made her want to cry. She_ hated_ that feeling, she'd been resisting the need to cry for two days, and she_ did_ need it, between the pain and the general feeling of weakness and the loneliness. She loved her mother, but Amy wasn't who she wanted with her and she was so_ lonely_. So she was fighting tears (again) when he spoke, without looking at her.

"How are you feeling?"

Bizarrely, the oh-so-casual and conversational tone of his question made River want to laugh, and she knew it was more than half hysteria but at this point she just didn't _care_. She allowed herself to fall back onto the bed, heedless of the half-healed burns, and just _howled_ with mingled laughter and tears. "Do you really w-want to know?" she half-sobbed, half-shouted, "I f-feel _wretched_. I'm _weak _and and my ankle aches and _I hate it_! And you p-promised me you would s-stay and I never thought you'd use R-rule One when I really n-needed you but I _did_ and you weren't _here_!" And she covered her face with her hands and began to cry in earnest.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

"He thought he'd killed her," said Rory. He was lying on the (not bunk) bed the TARDIS provided for them these days, holding Amy in his arms. "When we were putting the stretcher together. She stopped breathing for a minute or so and he figured it was his fault." He sighed.

Amy shook her head. "So now he's beatin' himself up for the wrong things? Forgot he found her, patched her up, held her together until you got there?"

"And restarted her breathing." Rory paused, groping for the right words. "He forgets the good things he's done. I think we _all_ forget the good things he's done. I know I do." He took a deep breath. "He puts on a good front, the goofy-alien bit, and we forget... we forget that under that mask, he's_ just a man_. He's stronger, and smarter, but he's just a man. And sometimes - like after..." he trailed off and tried again. "After things like what happened on Apalapucia... I've hated him for it. I love him like a brother, but sometimes I _hate_ him." He closed his eyes, hoping that she'd be able to forgive him.

_Oh my poor Rory,_ she thought_, even after all this time? _She took his face into her hands and he opened his eyes. "Rory, d'you remember up on that pyramid, when River told him that all those millions of people from all across the universe and all across Time were there willing to help?" Rory nodded. "And he didn't - he _couldn't _- believe her, 'cause he thought _why would anyone care what happened to him_? And the Dream Lord?" He nodded again, thoughtfully. "_He hates himself _that much, it's understandable that we hate him sometimes too." She kissed him and drew him closer, showing him very emphatically that_ she _understood too.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

The Doctor sat on the edge of the bed, staring aghast at his sobbing wife. _It never even occurred to me that not staying - breaking that promise - was lying to her. I thought she'd hate me, wouldn't want to see me_... he thought, _Oh, my River, I am so sorry_... He cleared his throat, where a lump had suddenly appeared, and whispered, "River?" He just wanted to hold her, to tell her it would be all right, but he was afraid to touch her, the burns had been _all over her_ and what should he do _now_? He closed his eyes against the pain of needing to comfort her but being unable to, and tried again. "River... I never meant, I thought I'd _killed _you, the morphine, too much morphine..." He was babbling now, the words tripping over each other in his haste to make her understand how _devastated_ he was that if she had died it would have been his fault. His hands were doing that flailing thing that they did when he was just undone by circumstance, he didn't know where to put them, and _oh_, he'd give anything right now to comfort her, to make it better, if only he _could_ without hurting her. "I thought I gave you too much, and when you stopped breathing, I... _River_, I thought I'd killed you! I'm so sorry, I can't even _tell _you how sorry, I..."

The Doctor had opened his eyes, but the tears in them were so thick that he didn't notice when River sat up and started listening, her face tear-streaked but the sobs subsiding. He didn't notice until she caught his hands in mid-flail and gripped them tightly so her own hands would stop trembling. "I need to understand, I need you to be clear for me. If you can't tell me," she said gently, her voice still shaking slightly, "Then show me." And she shifted on the bed so their foreheads touched, ignoring the twinge in her ankle as she did so. She closed her eyes, the better to concentrate on the connection between them, and began to receive the impressions and emotions and thoughts from his mind.

_Annoyance... worry... anger... pain, oh River, my River, I'm so sorry, no other way... River screaming with pain, River _hurting_, giving her pills, holding her head while she swallowed them... a flash of Rory's face, naked hatred seen there before he controlled it... brotherly love for Rory and agony of Rory hating him (deserve every _ounce_ of it, done horrible things)... River? River! River, oh no, (terror guilt love) River, please, breathe, breathe for her, in, breathe for her out, again, again, my fault, my fault, my FAULT... I'm sorry, my love, (no River, MY fault, shame longing fear)... Rory slapping him hard across the face... carrying River into the loving embrace of the blue box... killing rage toward the - whatever - had hurt his beautiful River so... so sorry, my River, didn't mean to lie, thought I'd killed you, thought you'd hate me too... so, _so _sorry..._

They broke apart, gasping, and he was babbling again, "You see, d'you_ see_, River, I could've _killed _you, if I hadn't been there, you'd never have stopped breathing-" and he broke off as she kissed him, hard on the lips.

"My love," she said against his mouth, tears thickening her voice, "If you hadn't been there, I would have _died_, alone and afraid in that cave... and no one would ever have known I was gone."

"I would have known," he said in a choked whisper, "Somehow I would have known." They both felt a wash of love and agreement from the TARDIS, and River laughed softly, kissing the Doctor again, feeling safe and loved.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

They were together in the room, the two of them, alone except for the ever-present warmth of the TARDIS' love for them. River had fallen asleep, and it was a natural and healing sleep for the first time in days. The Doctor sat next to her bed, gently stroking her hair, running his fingers through the crinkly strands. She was exhausted from the pain and the trauma, and her face was all swollen and tear-streaked. She had never been more beautiful to him. _My lovely River Song_, he thought, _you are so very precious to me_. He heard the soft, almost tentative, knock on the door, but ignored it; he was focused on River.

"Doctor?" It was Rory, speaking softly, as nurses do when they enter sleeping patients' rooms. "How is she?" He walked silently to stand next to the Doctor and took River's pulse. "Physically much better," he said in a dry, clinical tone as he counted the heartbeats in her wrist, and then his voice changed to that of a concerned parent as he looked at her face, "but she's been crying." The Doctor nodded, not taking his eyes off River's face, and continued his absent-minded caressing of River's curls. "Looks like you've helped her with that, though," Rory said, taking a close look at the Doctor's face. "I think you're more... at peace with yourself too," he said, sounding less like the medical professional, or like the parent, and more like _Rory_ this time, "Though you look like you could use some sleep."

The Doctor shook his head, looking up at Rory. "I promised I wouldn't leave her, and I intend to keep that promise this time," he said quietly, though not with that deadly tone that forewarned of the Oncoming Storm, "I'm staying here. I'll rest some though." He turned back to River, "And Rory?"

"Hmm?"

"Thank you. And for more than just this," He gestured at River and the medical gear around the bed, "Thank you for being my friend - my _brother _- even when you hated me." He looked up at Rory again and smiled slightly at the other man's expression. "It's alright, I hated me too. Still do sometimes." He stood, carefully disentangling his hand from River's hair and held it out for Rory to shake. "Friends?" Rory stared at the hand for a moment, tears in his eyes now too as he realized that it didn't _matter _that sometimes he hated the Doctor, because... he shook his head and pulled the Doctor into a hug.

"Not friends," he said in a choked voice. "Family."


End file.
